1. Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to device interfacing; and, more particularly, it relates to inter-device adaptable interfacing clock skewing between multiple devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Prior art systems have commonly attempted to employ on board skewing of clock signals between various devices. These on board delay lines typically are extremely space consumptive. As the premium of on board and chip real estate even continues to grow in terms of importance and cost, these approaches of using space on the board to serve as such elements fail to meet the design considerations of space conservation and efficient space utilization.
FIG. 1 is a system diagram illustrating a prior art embodiment of an interfacing clock skewing system 100. Two devices, shown as a device 110 and a device 170 are communicatively coupled together. The device 110 contains a clock 115 that generates a signal that is provided to the device 170. The clock signal has a predetermined frequency and phase. For illustration, we assume that the phase of the clock signal coming from the device 110 (from the clock 115) has a zero phase. However, the device 170 requires a clock signal having a particular phase that may very well be different from the frequency and phase of the clock signal that is provided by the device 110. To generate the proper phase, an on board skewing is used to generate the proper skewing/phase difference as the clock signal propagates from the device 110 to the device 170. The physical arrangement of the on board delay line often requires relatively significant spacing between the devices 110 and 170.
In short, the prior art implementation is to put the delay line on the board. Sometimes a skew of a certain length is used to place a hole in the data that is being communicated between the two devices. This inherently consumes more space and is a less efficient allocation of real estate for the entire system.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional systems will become apparent to one of skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.